


Clarity - A Short Dystopian Tale

by VirelaiSpades



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Dark, Dystopia, Gen, Gender Roles, Horror, Rebellion, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VirelaiSpades/pseuds/VirelaiSpades
Summary: This is something I actually wrote about a year ago, although I still think it's something I can be proud of today. I was heavily inspired by dystopian novels such as Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury and 1984 by Orwell, although I didn't take direct context from them or the universes they construct. I wanted to focus on gender roles in this story, and the frameworks by which we deal with new or uncomfortable information. There isn't graphic imagery or gore, but there is a dark tone consistent throughout the piece. I hope you enjoy, and constructive criticism is always appreciated!
Kudos: 1





	Clarity - A Short Dystopian Tale

Her boots didn’t feel right on the pitch black pavement. With each step there was a crushing sound that replaced the expected satisfying click of hard rubber colliding with cement. She began to worry. It was the first time she worried all day. She felt her heartbeat quicken and her legs move faster as if trying to outmaneuver the sound. Then she realized. The roads were coated with sand, to help the evening cars drive home in the cold icy conditions. Of course. 

She sighed, out of relief. And it was as though her sigh damaged something intangible around her, like a whisper spoken too audibly and too forcefully that it extinguishes a candle. The lamppost was out. Lampposts are the most difficult to fix of all the lights in the town, being so high up and covering so much area with their glow. But she wasn’t concerned with the condition of the lamppost, and not because it wasn’t her job to worry about them. She was worried, no,  _ scared _ of the figure that had instantly grown out of the absence of the light. It was something of the past, a creature that should have died long ago when she had grown up and walked through the doors of primary school for the first time. This figure was unlike anything she had ever seen.

Of course, she knew how to handle the unusual and unexpected, though she rarely ever faced it. She was proud of how well she remembered the acronym that promised to save her in the case of emergency.

CTR

  1. Cover Your Eyes
  2. Turn Around
  3. Run Away



Her memory kicked in like an engine exploding into life, and every time she had uttered the words “CTR” seemed to occur in a single instant as her body acted in unison with her mind. Her hands protected her eyes as if they fit perfectly upon her face, like a glove, and where her back was, her front was now there, as if her chest had spun around upon her heels to point her to safety as fast as possible. But there was a flaw.

She couldn’t remember the last time she ran. In class, they had practiced turning and closing until her arms ached. But never running. Running was for in the event of a real emergency, an action that could only occur when the time was finally upon her, should such an incident ever take place. And sure enough, her legs carried her forward as her mind stuttered and stalled.

_ “Count!” _ she commanded herself, and so she remembered.

When she was young she used to count the steps she took (one, two, three) on the way to school. It became necessary when (four, five, six) her mother would stop at the edge of the lawn (seven, eight) and tell her she must walk the rest of the distance to school (nine, ten, eleven) on her own (twelve). And it felt as though her shoes were growing roots (thirteen, fourteen) and if she did not keep her tempo and continue moving (fifteen, sixteen) her feet may grow stuck to that place of the cement (seventeen, eighteen, nineteen) and she would never be able to move again (twenty, twentyone, twentytwo). What would happen, she would ask to no one (twentythree, twentyfour), if she got stuck and her mother couldn’t hear her cry? How could she follow the rules (twentyfive, twentysix) if she couldn’t move her legs and run (twentyseven)? And worst of all, she didn’t understand such questions (twentyeight, twentynine) and yet her mind had no legs to get up and run (thirty, thirtyone), to run from the things she didn’t understand and the things that  _ scared _ -

Step thirtytwo lasted longer than any of the others, as her foot seemed to panic as it touched the ground and shot off, bringing her body crashing down onto the frozen concrete below. She felt pain shoot through her head as it had never before, and as her vision captured a final image of the pitch black sky, she remembered what she knew.

_ “Of course. Icy roads.” _ She thought, and then sighed before losing consciousness.

She awoke to find herself laying within the bed of her home. Or, at least she believed it was her home, as her room was quite similar to the room of any other woman, but to wake up in her own room made the most sense to her. Feeling awake quite suddenly, she sat up and found a note placed on her lap, scribbled in a neat handwriting. 

“I found you lying on the ground on the corner of Stonewall and Orchard, so I did the gentlemanly thing to do and brought you home. It is quite unwise to sleep in the middle of the street, please use your bed next time like everyone else.

P.S. I had to ask many of your neighbors in order to finally find your house, and would like a courteous gift in return. Apple pie is my favorite.”

Of course, this made sense as well. Any Gentleman must help a poor woman lying limp on the cold street. Taking a deep breath, she stood up from the bed and composed herself for the morning.

Worry did not wait until the evening this time. It did not wait until the sun had made its way through the sky, or even until she had left the established safety of her own home.

_ Zero Zero _ , the clock displayed.  _ Zero Zero _ . That was not a time. There was no point in a day where the clock had ever told her  _ Zero Zero _ . She rushed over to the clock and grabbed a hold of it.

“What time is it?” She sternly commanded the clock.

_ Zero Zero _ , the clock continued to flash.

If the clock did not tell her the time she couldn’t know when to get up, except now she was already up, and so the time must be 8:30am and not  _ Zero Zero _ . 

“What time is it?” She pleaded. If the clock wasn’t working then something would be wrong with the schedule, and if the schedule was wrong then  _ she _ was wrong. She had never been late for the day. What would she do? Go back to sleep until the clock read the time and she could begin?

_ Zero Zero _ . 

“WHAT TIME IS IT?” She tore the damned piece of metal from the wall and hurled it onto the floor and it dug into the carpet with a single solitary  _ THUD  _ and remained still.

“Good morning, Mallory. The time is 9:47.” A robotic voice answered her question from elsewhere within the house. The woman was still staring at the clock, now silent. She breathed heavily as she towered over it, suddenly feeling a great responsibility thrust upon her shoulders, the weight of which forced her to remain very still and glued into the carpet.

She’d never been at home at 9:47. She wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to be home at 9:47. At this thought she burst out of her room, down the hall, past the Husband’s Room, and out into the kitchen. Her Home Console sat on the counter, reminding her to remain calm. The large white orb had always been there, from the moment she had been handed the keys to the house to the moment she stood before it now, asking again for the time.

“Good morning, Mallory. The time is 9:48.” The console didn’t seem to realize the great catastrophe that was taking place before it, as if it had no sense of the tension in the air.

“The time is wrong,” she begged, hoping for an answer. The orb remained silent for a moment, as if it had never heard such incorrect words.

“If you are experiencing technical difficulties, a Handyman can be here by 12pm to solve the issue. Would you like to call a Handyman?”

She had never been asked a question by the console before. Staring into the light of the orb as if to find what creature inside had truly spoken to her, she whispered “yes.” It was a request so quiet and uncertain it was a miracle the console could hear it.

12:00, she thought to herself. 70 minutes. And then, something scary. A man, who would not be a Gentleman, would come to her door and fix her. The man would know exactly what is wrong, and she would be unable to hide it any longer. He would inspect every inch, every corner of her house with a flashlight so bright it could expose an imperfection that no one else would see beforehand. He would see the broken clock sunk into the carpet of her bedroom. He would know how late she slept, how she missed morning. And worst of all, he would know her secret.

Mallory was the only one with a secret. Any secret, she was told, meant a scar lied behind it. And scars had to be cleaned and treated. But Mallory would not let a Handyman fix her scar. She would not let  _ anyone _ fix her scar. The only one who could know, she had decided, was the housecat. 

It was the same night she had bought the house, and she felt so many things that she simply couldn’t sleep. She had a house and an office too and a street to walk down in between home and work. In a few years she may even have a car, and no longer would she count her steps, but instead hum along with her car engine as it carried her down the road. But there was one thing she would  _ never _ have. And it was this one thing, as she sat in the corner of her room where the camera never pointed and the light was dimmest, that she told the cat. She whispered it so softly it sounded like another language, a language no audio recording device had never captured, but one that animals had spoken long before cats and humans had sat in the corner of homes.

“ _ I will never have a Husband.” _

She had spoken these words to herself many more times than she could count. And she never truly understood it. It was true, but she did not know why, or where it came from. She had never read it out of any book, nor found it in any database. But it was certain. It was certain because she had locked the door to the Husband’s Room when the camera wasn’t looking. It was certain because of the way other women looked at Gentleman that she could never do herself. It was certain because of the things every other women said that she never knew how to respond to. It was certain because of the clothes women wore and the clothes she wanted to wear, and the uncrossable line in between. And because it was certain, she was imperfect.

From that same corner of the room, she decided. The Handyman would not come at 12:00pm. The Handyman would not see her home and find the clock and fix her scar. The Handyman would not  _ see _ anything. She got up and walked calmly out of her room. Her feet would not stop moving, not out of the fear of rooting down forever, but out of the possibility that they may never have to touch the ground again. She grabbed the key to the Husband’s Room and turned the knob for the first time. A blast of cold air hit her as she swung the door open. 

The room was dark. When she bought the home, the Salesman said a strong athletic Husband would live here. The room even came with all kinds of sporting supplies, for when she invited that perfect Gentleman over. And in the silhouette of the open door she saw the figure from the road, staring back at her with eyes it did not have. She took a step forward and crushed the figure, and she swore she heard the crunching of sand beneath her feet when she did. And then she kept on walking.

She then performed another imperfection. A wooden bat was lying on the dresser, where it awaited to feel the strong grasp of a Gentleman ready to swing. She grabbed a hold of it, and she and the bat were at once imperfect together. She felt a wildness she was never supposed to feel course through her veins, a strange, welcoming sense of destruction. She had become an entity stronger than what should be contained in a house, a creature deserving of a box but that would never fit in one. On her way out of the room, she swung and shattered the Husbands’ Room’s camera against the wall. 

One by one she picked them off, as if they were cysts that had infected her home and grown as she wasn’t looking, and had been long in need of being popped. She piled every camera into the Kitchen and grabbed the console. With a great effort she had never utilized to such a degree she hoisted the console into the air above her head, like the head of the enemy being displayed for all in the crowd to cheer at, and brought it crashing down into what remained of the surveillance system. Rather than sinking into the floor like a clock, the console shattered into a thousand pieces of light, leaving sharp metal strewn across her Kitchen floor like a warzone. Had it been the remains of any other entity she may have cried. But she would not weep over the remains of a monster. 

After the exhilaration of her triumph wore off, the truth began to set in. The cameras were destroyed. The Handymen would notice. The Handymen were coming. And in preparation she had turned her house into an imperfection in itself. A monstrosity from which she knew she must flee. For the first and only time in her life, she ran out the front door of the home with her eyes wide open.

Sirens sounded in the distance. Where she was running was simply away from the noise, at least at first. Before long, memory guided her feet onto a new path. A large stretch of fence she had seen as a child, but never understood. It was a large circle, almost perfect in shape, and in the middle was something she was never allowed to look at.

She tried asking her mother, pleading for an answer, long long ago. “There are no rules to guide you in the middle,” her mother had explained. “No jobs or houses or roads in between, no women and no Gentleman.” And by now, she had climbed over the fence, barely able to hear the approaching footsteps in the distance as she sprinted down into the grass, as it slowly turned into sand beneath her feet, and then into sky.

Before her stretched an image of the night sky, though it rippled and moved before her in her presence. She was so far away from any lamppost or lightbulb and yet somehow she could see the moon and the darkness that surrounded it better. And within that darkness, tiny specks of light that she had never seen before twinkled back at her. She had no words to describe it, which made it all the more entrancing. She stepped into the sky, and realized it felt cool and wet, and seemed to move around her, embracing her. And as she entered the water she saw more than just the stars. She saw a little girl, with her mother by her side, walking to school together. She saw a house with a young woman and a housecat, with no Husband’s Room to be seen. She saw the same young woman with a daughter of her own, leading her to school without the need to count the number of steps. She saw the way she always wanted things to be, and she didn’t care that the image rippled and waivered. It was hard to make out and yet the clearest she had ever seen an image in her life. And as her heart hammered inside her chest with joy she danced with the herself as she new her, and together they fell backward into the stars.


End file.
